By Chukwudi Nweje
Chief Victor Umeh, a chieftain of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) led the reelection campaign of Governor Willie Obiano. In this interview monitored on Africa Independent Television (AIT), he revealed the reasons APGA won the November 18 governorship election.
Twice you led the campaign of former governor in Anambra State, Pete Obi and he won. Now again you have led the campaign of Governor Willie Obiano twice and he won. Correct me if I’m wrong will it not be right to call you the godfather of Anambra politics?
No, that doesn’t make me a godfather; it rather makes me a diligent party worker. When there is a call to duty, I go out to help my party; I do it with other party members. I also led the campaign of Rochas Okorocha in 2011 before he migrated. It is a different ball game from what they call godfather. A godfather stays behind the scene and puts somebody forward, finances the election for a reward that the public may not know, when the candidate wins he steps forward to collect his reward. That is not me I worked for my party during these critical times you mentioned to ensure victory for APGA.
How were you able to pull that Chesnutt out of the fire? The election was projected to be a tight race that was there for any of the candidates to grab?
The purported projected equal chance for the candidates to win the election was make-believe. It was a propaganda unleashed on the unsuspecting public, but those of us in the state were certain that Governor Obiano and APGA would win the election. Clearly, what was available to Anambra people were two choices, to sustain a governor who has done well for the people to continue in office to serve the people or to gamble with uncertainty and bring somebody that you don’t know based only on promises of ‘ I will do this and that.’ Governor Obiano put up starling performance appreciated deeply by the people of Anambra State. The masses were appreciative of the quality governance of Obiano in three years and seven months. It was a clear case of those who were challenging him and APGA singing songs that the electorate didn’t want to listen to.
So many things were responsible for the victory. This was a governor that the opponents chose to use blackmail and falsehood to put down before the election and the more they tried to put him down the more the things the governor has done for the people continued to stare them in the face. The flag- off of the campaign on 20th October 2017 was the first indication that Obiano was unstoppable. It was the largest crowd ever assembled in a political rally in recent time. The venue- Dr. Alex Ekwueme Square in Awka, the state capital was filled to the brim with quality people, traditional rulers, presidents- general of town unions and many groups. Those who could not get into the venue were outside and they were more in number and so it shook the political firmament.
During that period, the Director General of the PDP campaign said it was possible to rent a crowd in Anambra?
During their flag-off how many traditional rulers were there to rent. It was a process open to ever body. I told you the underpinning factor for Obiano’s victory was his sterling performance. Obiano came with a focused vision of what to do for the state and he was able to arrest all the problems that had defiled solutions in the previous admissions. One was security, Anambra State was known for violent crimes and kidnappings. When the former governor was there about 68 high profile cases were recorded including that of the commissioner for Science and Technology, C. C. Okoli who was kidnapped and till today he was not found. That will give you an idea of the kind of security challenges we had in Anambra. But when Obiano came he knew there was nothing he could do in the face of mounting insecurity so in the first few months he called a security summit where security experts made propositions and after the summit he went to work.
Was he the one that came with the policy to demolish houses where kidnappers operate from?
No, Obi did that but out of punishment because it didn’t solve the problem. What solved the problem was that Obiano adopted modern ways of fighting crime by bringing in equipments. Yes, Obi gave security vans to the police but it didn’t solve the problem. Obiano gave the police and army vans that were equipped with communication gadgets. With the taskforce Obiano put in place, he had a war council, once a kidnap case is reported within minutes they will be tracked. Obiano spent security votes on security and boosted the morale of the people fighting crime and it paid off. Today Anambra is the safest state in Nigeria and investors are now coming to Anambra.
During Obi’s time the Chinese working with Innoson Group were kidnapped, the skeleton of one of them was later discovered in Ebony State. Many of our industrialists in Onitsha and Nnewi also relocated to Lagos and Anambra went down economically. But with security restored the economy is picking up again.
Obiano also audited the workforce as soon as he came in and captured the biometrics of the workforce and computerised salary payment. On the 25th of the month the workers receive their salaries, even when the country was passing through recession and some states owed salary, Anambra was paying and he even gave a 15 percent salary increment across board.
He also introduced something that ensured his victory ‘Choose Your Community Project’. Every community in the state was entitled to a project worth N40 million to be drawn in two tranches, they will choose the project themselves, choose the contractor and government will provide the money. It was an even distribution of community development irrespective of the size of the community.
As we were preparing for election, every community had drawn the first tranche of N20 million and had a project to show. About 86 communities had also drawn their second tranche. So when people were saying that Obiano has not done anything the communities were laughing at them because the projects were there standing.
When Obiano took over he inherited 101 roads under construction. The former governor barely three months to his exit flagged off the roads at the cost of N185 billion, paid mobilisation, leaving a contingent liability N127 billion for Obiano. By the time we were going to election Obiano had completed 51 of the roads and paid a total of N62 billion.
Were these not the same roads that the former governor said he did and even used to campaign for the PDP?
The roads were not done by him, he just flagged them. He was just carrying out propaganda against the governor and the people knew the difference between his administration and that of Obiano. He was there for eight years, Obiano had just spent three years and eight months and people have seen what he’s done.
Is it not unusual that in an election where you have five dominant parties one wins in all the 21 councils?
There is nothing unusual in it; it was the governor’s performance. It is only a fool that will throw away something good. We decided to preserve good governance. There is nothing like bad governance in Anambra State, it is a case of somebody that was thinking inside the box and thinking outside the box. The former governor was thinking outside the box.
Is this not an irony because Obi brought Obiano and less than one year into the administration both men started quarreling without anybody knowing the cause?
Obi handed over on 17 March 2014 and four months after on August 1, he resigned as BoT chairman of APGA , then in October he defected to PDP and was appointed deputy DG Goodluck Jonathan Campaign Organisation in South Nigeria comprising South East, South West and South South. Six months would have been a short time for them to quarrel if money was the issue. From the onset Obi had his eyes at the centre. He became governor under very turbulent circumstances; we defended him against the same PDP that stole his mandate in 2003. He is a philosopher and he postulated that if you enter a vehicle and get to your destination you must disembark. He used APGA in his own sense as a vehicle to where he wanted to go. As soon as he used us for eight years he defected. Don’t forget that in February 2014 Obi accompanied PDP governors to the National Assembly to meet the PDP caucus. During the campaign in 2015 he described APGA that sustained him for eight years as a local league and that he had gone to the Premier League. It was a long planned defection but when Jonathan lost the presidential election his political calculation collapsed and he started peddling rumours that he was sent away from APGA.
During the Anambra governorship campaign Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu jnr defected to the APC and said APGA no longer represented his father’s beliefs. What is your take on that?
He was misguided by some people who made some promises to him. But if he said that APGA no longer represented what his father wanted in his life time then it means he didn’t even understand what his father wanted. It was a tragic mistake he made; they lured him into APC to embarrass APGA.
Did you get support from aggrieved PDP members?
Yes some PDP members defected to APGA. When he went into the PDP, he was a stranger. But he was made a leader because of the political weight they thought he has. You know people believe that once you are a governor that you have weight. They forget how you became governor. Obi went into the PDP and imposed his godson on the party. PDP thought Obi would be an asset but he was their Achilles heel.
We saw clips of people being paid money during the election and when the result was announced other parties said APGA bought victory?
It was a face-saving move because they didn’t expect the kind of beating they received. When we were campaigning across the 21 councils we didn’t see them anywhere, they were busy putting money together to buy votes. If you play back our clips from the last days of the campaign you will see that we told the people to take their money but vote their conscience.
Yes the international observers said that money was given to the electorate but these were people who stood no chance. We have no reason to buy votes; APGA has been entrenched in Anambra State. For 11 years APGA has been in Anambra State and it has been good stories, it was a victory well earned.
INEC recently in obedience to the latest court order fixed January 13, 2018 for the Anambra Central by- election. Now we hear again the election may not hold due to pending cases. What exactly is happening?
It is a tragedy that some people decided to take Anambra people for a ride because of their selfish reasons. The Anambra Central election is pending because those who have lost do not want the election to take place at all. They want the seat to remain vacant till 2019.
There is nothing legal standing in the way of this election. The Court of Appeal that is the final court for National Assembly disputes had since December 7, 2015 nullified that election and ordered a rerun within 90 days and disqualified the candidate of the PDP, Uche Ekwunife from that election, therefore by extension the PDP too.